


I'm Fine

by GretchenSinister



Series: My Top 20 Short Gen Fics [2]
Category: Rise of the Guardians (2012)
Genre: Cuddling & Snuggling, Gen, Sickfic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-19
Updated: 2019-01-19
Packaged: 2019-10-12 13:06:15
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,077
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17468135
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/GretchenSinister/pseuds/GretchenSinister
Summary: Original Prompt: "Everyone *except* Jack gets sick. They all end up at the North Pole; Tooth’s fairies drag her there so she won’t keep trying to work and Jack drags Bunny and Sandy so he won’t have to move around so much. Pitch ends up there because he *wasn’t* sick, really he wasn’t, right up until he got there to taunt them, and then, in the middle of a dramatic monologue, he started feeling terrible as well.Jack takes this opportunity to taunt everyone and is a surprisingly good caretaker."Everyone is such a dork in this fill. Seriously. Most especially Pitch. And Sandy’s philosophy seems to be best written as “Cuddles aw yiss”.





	I'm Fine

**Author's Note:**

> Originally posted on Tumblr on 8/1/2013.

Jack perched on top of a chair he had convinced the yetis to bring into the globe room. In front of the fire, the four other Guardians dozed peacefully on a pile of mattresses, pillows, and blankets he had also convinced the yetis to bring out. He shook his head. North had his own bedroom at the pole, of course, but when Jack had seen that he was sick and told him to lie down, he had found out that North’s windows didn’t have glass or even ice in them.  
  
***  
  
“North! What is this?” he exclaimed, laughing in disbelief.  
  
“Brisk air is good for strength,” North said, before blowing his nose on a large red handkerchief. “Freshness invigorates the mind.”  
  
Jack wished he had more hands to facepalm with.  
  
He hadn’t been having much luck persuading North to rest somewhere warmer, when Tooth, held up by a few dozen mini-fairies, had been brought in through the window.  
  
“Jack, they won’t believe me when I say I’m fine,” she said, shivering, her voice hoarse.  
  
“Okay.” Jack leaned on his staff. “I get it now. Not only did you not really ‘get’ snow days, you also really don’t ‘get’ sick days.” The fairies peeped in fervent agreement.  
  
“Tooth! You must sit by fire, is too cold in here, very bad for you,” North said, bustling her off to the globe room. Jack rolled his eyes and followed them to make sure that the yetis got blankets for North as well as Tooth like he knew North would have told them to.  
  
“Is something going around?” he asked them, once they were both settled on a sofa.  
  
North launched into a technical explanation, which, presented in somewhat feverish terms, Jack didn’t really understand. But he did get the general gist, which was, “yes” and soon after that Bunny (whose mutterings about allergies had been totally unbelievable given that he was usually fine in a garden of blooming flowers) and Sandy (thanks to whom Jack now knew what “I’m fine” looked like in dreamland, and also what lying in dreamsand looked like) had been collected and deposited in the globe room as well.  
  
***  
  
Now, everything was nice, peaceful, and quiet except for the odd wheezy breath or snore. Everyone had gotten chicken soup for dinner, tea with honey and whiskey later, and soundly mocked for their workaholic tendencies. Jack was feeling fairly proud of himself. Tomorrow they would all rest some more and he would introduce them to the sick day art of mocking bad daytime TV.  
  
This was of course when Pitch showed up.  
  
“What’s this?” he said, his voice deeper than usual, as Jack sprung into a defensive pose. “The Guardians? All together and conveniently weakened? I couldn’t have planned it better myself! Hahahaha—ah-choo!” He sneezed into the sleeve of his robe and Jack relaxed slightly.  
  
“You’re sick, aren’t you?”  
  
“Of course not! Unless you mean I have a sick mind, for I do! So very sick and twisted and full of evil schemes!” His face twisted as he tried to stifle a yawn.  
  
“Oh for the love of—look, Pitch, can you not be a workaholic too? I mean, you don’t even get anything out of what you do!”  
  
“You don’t know what I get out of my job,” Pitch said petulantly, sniffling.  
  
“Okay, whatever. But if you calm down and take a sick day I’ll give you soup and a big thick quilt to wrap up in.”  
  
Pitch paused. “And a hot water bottle.”  
  
“And a hot water bottle. Just chill out, give me five seconds.” Jack flew off to the kitchens to heat up some soup, hoping he would run into a yeti who could tell him where a hot water bottle might be.  
  
***  
  
“Gerda says she’ll be up with the hot water bottle soon,” Jack said, handing Pitch, who was now sitting in Jack’s chair, the bowl of soup. Pitch nodded, and as he ate he said nothing else, but stared intently at the other Guardians in their pile on the floor. North was on the rightmost edge of the mattresses, curled up on his side and piled in blankets. Brisk air was definitely not something he was wanting now. Tooth lay a little way away from him, curled around Sandy, both breathing much easier than they had been earlier. On the leftmost edge rested Bunny, who drowsily pushed and pulled the covers over himself as the night went on. Jack made a mental note that he’d have to pay special attention to his fever.  
  
Pitch set his empty bowl on the floor.  
  
“So, I can get another mattress for you,” Jack offered.  
  
“No,” Pitch said brusquely. He stalked over to the group in front of the fire, and pulled off the blankets that covered Sandy and Tooth.  
  
“Hey, leave them alone,” Jack said, going to hover near Pitch, who only glared at him.  
  
Without another word, Pitch carefully extricated Sandy from Tooth’s arms and pushed them apart so he could lie between them. Jack looked on with disbelief as he calmly curled himself nearly all the way around the little dreamweaver, even wrapping his arms around the small form so that his hands rested on Sandy’s belly, and buried his face in his hair.  
  
“He’s going to kick your ass for that,” Jack breathed, but Pitch only closed his eyes and shook his head.  
  
Jack expression of disbelief only grew when Tooth blearily opened her eyes, and instead of being alarmed to find Pitch between her and Sandy, simply shoved him in the back and muttered something like, “Ass. Why do you always do this? He’s got two sides,” before fluttering/crawling over them both to continue snuggling Sandy from the other side.   
  
At a loss, Jack covered the three once more with several thick blankets. Had Sandy even woken up for any of this? Jack wasn’t sure, but his expression had gone from neutral to smiling.  
  
He was just about to fly off when Pitch glanced up at him. “I still need the water bottle for my feet, you know. Both of them are a lot shorter than me.”  
  
Jack nodded exaggeratedly and said nothing, though his mind hummed with questions. Okay, so tomorrow would still include the watching of bad TV, but it had also better include a satisfactory explanation of what was going on here. It was the least they could do in exchange for all the tea-brewing and soup-making.

**Author's Note:**

> Comments from Tumblr: 
> 
> silver-s-blog reblogged this from gretchensinister and added:  
> This is so cute
> 
> tejoxys reblogged this from gretchensinister and added:  
> Help! Cute! I can’t even! asdgjhdfghjsdlk okay wow, I’m weak to scenarios where they’re all being nice to each other like this. Also, people making Sandywiches.
> 
> emeraldembers reblogged this from gretchensinister and added:  
> Oh my god I am tagging this with chicken soup for the soul because I NEED THIS FIC FOR EVERY TIME I WILL BE SICK OVER WINTER. IT IS SO. DARNED. CUTE.
> 
> bowlingforgerbils said: omg this is the cutest thing ever THE CUDDLES I CAN’T


End file.
